(via Wikimedia Commons)

At 11:59 p.m. on Sept. 28, 2011, I was sitting at the table in the Collegian’s office nervously toggling between browser tabs. Two minutes later, at 12:01 a.m. on Sept. 29, 2011, I switched the privacy setting on a WordPress.com blog I had set up earlier that month from password-protected to public. The Thrill was born.

In the last year, this blog has grown and changed significantly (I hope for the better). We’ve been newsy at times and irreverent at others. We have somehow continued to come up with things to divide into lists.

We’ve also made mistakes. And when that has — not infrequently — happened, our readers have been kind enough to point our errors out. In fact, almost every good thing that has happened to The Thrill since that Thursday morning is thanks to them. Every time someone navigates to our home page or clicks a link to one of our posts on Facebook, they are generously offering their time to us — to hear what we’ve learned and what we have to say. So, to everyone who read our first post and to everyone who just started reading today: Thank you.

Thank you, as well, to everyone who helped make this project a reality and then sustain it over the past year.

As for the next year (and perhaps the many years that follow), the blog is now firmly in the capable hands of Becca Hafter ’14 and Leslie Martin ’14. They are, I think, committed to maintaining The Thrill as a blog that knows to make you laugh during finals week and inform you when the Collegian’s weekly edition is just not timely enough.

While we’re not having a birthday party — because we are only one year old and infants cannot organize parties — you can send any celebratory messages or questions or concerns to thekenyonthrill@gmail.com. May we continue to get your irate emails/comments/texts/phone calls for another year.